At the ASEM 7 Summit in Beijing in October 2008, ASEM members expressed their commitment to jointly address the challenges of sustainable development and adopted the “Beijing Declaration on Sustainable Development”. The ASEM Development Conference I held in Manila in April 2009 was the first step in jointly exploring the current challenges. The ASEM Foreign Ministers Meeting held in Hanoi in May 2009 welcomed the idea to pursue the objective with the holding of a second conference.

In Yogyakarta, ASEM partners were invited to continue the dialogue on ways to support and promote sustainable development. It allowed exchanges on specifically the future of Asia-Europe cooperation and will focus on three specific themes: climate change and low-carbon economy, social cohesion, and policy coherence – ensuring that sustainable development policies are note undermined by other policies. On the basis of this work, it would become possible to design a political document which could be submitted for consideration of the ASEM members and through them, for approval of the ASEM 8 Summit.

The 2nd ASEM Development Conference was hosted by Indonesia and co-sponsored by the European Commission. Over 200 high-level participants from ASEM-member governments, international organisations, civil society, and think-tanks discussed the future of Asia-Europe cooperation for sustainable development, low-carbon development, as well as the role of social cohesion and policy coherence for development.

Participation:

Governmental and non-governmental experts and representatives